Franks, Romans and Countrymen: Integrating Aquitaine into the Carolingian Empire

Abstract

This chapter is essentially a case study that brings together the themes of law and identity, resilience and adaptation, empire, and ethnicity, highlighted in chapter 9. It zooms in on the various mechanisms employed to integrate the semi-independent polity of Aquitaine into the emerging Carolingian realm—and to deal with their significance in the sources composed in retrospect. Based around the “official” absorption of the duchy in 767/8, the chapter looks at the various modes of identification not only employed by the Aquitanians themselves but also visible within Carolingian chronicles, capitularies, and hagiographical narratives as they tried to make sense of this region, which was rich in Roman history but with a population that remained aware of its Visigothic and Basque roots as well.